


Optimism Is Innate

by keire_ke



Category: Captain America (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Poor Charles, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:18:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5267633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kick-starting the apocalypse is not hard. It should be, but it isn't. Stopping, or at least grinding it to a halt, on the other hand, is a Hail Mary and a half.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Optimism Is Innate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/gifts).



> Whew! I hope you enjoy this, Gerec! Many thanks to K, for making sure I don't just slap random words onto the page. You're invaluable, darling! <3
> 
> Important note: for the purposes of this story the events of _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ transpired in 1972.

It's amazing how soon things can turn to shit once the zombies outnumber the humans. I never thought I'd miss the humans, but welp, here we are, hopelessly lost without their presence. It was bad enough when the zombies started outnumbering mutants (and according to Charles that only took about a week), but when it turned out that they began to outnumber the humans…

There's a faint light in the room they're in, which is somebody's room, somebody's bedroom. Or was. The light is cast by the streetlamp outside, which still works by some miracle. It can't last long. Many facilities are still defended, still have people fighting, but it's only a matter of time, with what was supposed to be the cure spreading as it does.

A part of me wishes we had never left the mansion, which is only a little ironic, considering how long I have spent running from it. In the end, I suppose, you fall back on the last thing that you knew which was safe, and… that was always Charles, for me. Even after everything, after Cuba, after Paris, after Washington, Charles was there, waiting, with his door open wide, even when he wasn't particularly happy to see me.

"Beans?" Charles asks and holds out a can of beans in tomato sauce, balancing a can opener on top of it.

Then there were beans.

"You know I hate beans," I say, taking it anyway. At least the tomato sauce is a distraction.

"That's all we have right now."

"Are we out of apples?"

"We ate the last one yesterday."

"Shit."

The sludge sticks to the spoon, dripping one fat bean back into the thick tomato paste, which swallows it with a discouraging glop. It tastes about as good as it sounds, slimy in my mouth, lumpy in my throat, heavy in my stomach.

The can is half empty when the slurp of bean fighting for freedom has to give way to shuffling footsteps in the corridor. Charles stills immediately. He's learned by now to take cues and so he flattens himself against the wall, a handgun held loosely at his side, as we both listen to the voices, to the movement outside, dreading the howl, the moans that must follow.

Until they don't.

"We mean no harm!" says a woman out in the corridor. "There's two of us, and we need shelter."

Charles relaxes immediately. "In here!" He strides to the apartment door and opens it wide, admitting the pair inside. There's just time enough for me to shift into the disguise I most often wear, before they come stumbling through the door, and luckily for us it's just as the voice promised: two people, a man and a woman, neither of them particularly tall. They're a curious duo, nonetheless. The woman is a bona fide bombshell. She's red-headed, with full lips and voluptuous figure, and off-hand I would deem her the polar opposite of helpless. Something about the way she's holding herself, about the way she looks at me, and then Charles, makes my feet seek purchase on the floor, lest it come to a fight. The guy hanging onto her shoulders, on the other hand, is skinny and wheezing so bad I can hear the air rattle his lungs.

There's also a blood-stained bandage on his hand.

"Miss," Charles says slowly. "Has he—"

"He's been bitten," the woman says curtly. "It's not a concern."

"Have you been outside lately?" I ask, and she glares.

"He's been bitten," she repeats. "It happened last Tuesday. He is still alive and as you are free to verify displaying no symptoms of impending death. The asthma attack is completely unrelated." This much seemed to be true. The man, small, blond and rather skinny, is struggling to breathe, but his body temperature is normal, going by his coloring, and his skin wasn't a motley pale, on its way to grey.

Which is a revelation and a half.

"He's immune?" Charles asks, breathless, helping the woman to place her companion on the bed and checking his pulse and pupils. "If it's been more than three days then he's immune—"

"He's not. It was a one-time thing – he had drugs in his system that countered the bite, which we can safely assume gone."

Charles's head snaps up and he stares at her. "What drugs?"

"Undisclosed, I'm afraid."

"There are drugs that can counter the virus? That's—that's huge, we didn't know there was anything, we thought the original formula, the original research was the only way—"

"It's moot," the woman says coldly. "Going after those drugs is not a viable plan."

On the bed the man wheezes and struggles to sit up. He grits his jaw and something about that expression rings a bell, a dim, distant bell, and the he says, "Nat—"

And I know.

"You're Steve Rogers, Captain America," I say and Charles nearly hits the ceiling.

The woman, who cannot be anyone other than Natasha Romanoff, stares impassively. It should make me nervous, but this is a game I know how to play just as well. "You work for the agency. You must know a way to reverse it."

"We don't."

"Oh really? You spend all this time getting personal with every single ethically dubious organization in the country, but you can't figure out how to stop a disease that's killing everyone?"

"Unfortunately, it's not that simple," Romanoff says at long last. "I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that without the original research, the original researcher, or even the original set of samples, there is only so far we can get on the science in the amount of time we had."

"You can't tell me you didn't have a mole in Trask's laboratories."

"We did. Both of them died in the early testing stages. As far as we've been able to ascertain, they were one of the primary causes of the uncontrolled spread of the disease."

"Wow. That agency of yours can't seem to keep anything contained, can it?"

"That agency of mine didn't execute the only man who had all the critical information about the pathogen," Romanoff says, a faint smirk on her lips. "Most of us have done what we've done in good faith. Have you, Miss Darkholme?"

Out of the corner of my eye I see Charles stand, even though his hands are still on Captain Rogers' chest, rising and falling in tune with his breaths. "Natasha?" Rogers whispers, and then covers his mouth as another bout of asthma overtakes him.

Well, he's not the only one who has trouble breathing.

"It's fine, Steve. Settle down. Miss Darkholme and I have an understanding now." Romanoff slides the backpack of her shoulders and drops it on the table in the corner, still watching me, her gaze roaming over my skin.

"That's not my name," I spit out of reflex rather than particular need. Or want, if honesty is the priority. Raven is an old skin which was so easy to slip into, even after all those years.

"It is a name that hasn't been dragged through every major news outlet in the country, along with your picture. Get used to the luxury of having it."

"Pictures are not a concern," I say, even though my skin is crawling.

"Perhaps. Or perhaps you underestimate the distinctiveness of your bone structure." Romanoff pulls a can out of her pack and opens it with a knife. "The color of the skin obscures, but it doesn't hide."

A click of a gun almost startles me. Charles has his back against the wall, and a handgun in his hands. "I'm sorry," he says, completely focused on Romanoff, while on the bed Captain Rogers slowly pulls his own gun out of a holster at his side. "But I can't let you arrest Raven."

"Relax, Dr. Xavier. It wasn't my intention. Steve, put the gun down."

Charles looks down, frantic, straight into the muzzle of the pistol pointed at his head. To his credit, though he trembles, his gun doesn't waver, which in itself is not surprising. Charles is a crack shot, who excels at pointing a gun at human beings. He's not great when it comes to following through on the threat, but I suppose you can't have everything.

"Natasha…" Rogers' his eyes flicker between me and Charles.

Yes, I know who you are, Dr. Xavier. I know what you are, too. So you know that I'm armed, but not against you. We don't mean harm."

"Charles," I say, "We can't trust her." But it is futile. Charles is already lowering his gun, tucking it out of sight, even though he can't know this, he can't know anything right now. "Charles!"

"We can't do this alone."

"So she can sell us to their agency later?"

"We won't," Captain Rogers says. His voice is deep, but breathless, still struggling with the aftermath of the asthma attack, but his voice sounds vicious. "I swear. SHIELD is and will remain disbanded, if I have anything to say about it."

Charles smiles. "I would expect no less. Still, we have a couple of ideas we haven't yet tried back home."

"Dr. McCoy," Romanoff says, and this time she smirks. "Don't look so shocked, SHIELD has—had many sources. We are not your enemy, Miss Darkholme."

"Aren't you?" I let my skin ripple and shift, and Romanoff is looking at her own face. It barely fazes her.

"Do you want me to be?" she simply asks.

"Raven…" Charles raises his hands. "Please. We will need help."

This is not a good idea. This will never be a good idea. I can barely work with Charles, let alone these strangers. Organizations don't just die when you cut off their heads! That's what got us into the mess in the first place, but tell that to Charles.

"What happened to you, Captain?" he asks quietly, perching on the foot of the bed while Rogers pushes himself into a sitting position, one limb at a time. His clothes are mismatched, the jacket too loose, the t-shirt too juvenile. The ensemble hardly brings Captain America to mind, yet he holds himself stiff and ready, much like he was in all the official coverage.

"I was bitten, like Natasha said." His fingers probe at the bandage and he winces, fishing for a first-aid kit in his backpack with his other hand. "We kept moving, because I figured there was enough time to get to Trask laboratories before I—Well. You know." The bandages come off and we can see it clearly: the imprint of a human mouth in torn flesh, something which doesn't quite leave the mind once first seen, and there's hardly anyone who escaped seeing it by now. The difference is Roger's hand is still pale and pink, and living, not grasping for his fellow man. "But I started getting sick the next day."

"His symptoms were wrong, so I didn't put a bullet in his head right away," Romanoff says. "He had a fever, but he was lucid, there was no paralysis, his hand kept bleeding and his blood remained red, so we concluded the serum must be fighting the virus. Five days after the bite he was like this. That's when we started moving again. We managed to infiltrate the laboratories, and here we are."

"Then you have the research?" Charles asks. "A cure?"

Romanoff shakes her hand, and for once displays genuine emotion. "No. There wasn't a soul in the labs that was still alive. From the records they have been working on the cure, or at least something that would slow the disease down, but time ran out for most of them. For us, too. The facility went up in flames."

"Great. That's just great." My skin ripples under the jacket. That's where we were heading, Charles and I, seeking the research. Not much point in trying now, if all that's waiting for us are smoking ruins. "What now?"

"Obviously, we have Steve." Romanoff, who has been toying with the open can of spaghetti, pulls out a fork out of her belt. She drops onto a chair and starts eating. "That's not nothing."

"It's not something, either," Captain Rogers says drily. "SHIELD and Hydra had the samples of my blood for several years now and I have yet to see any other supersoldiers. I don't expect they were waiting for a better political climate. The only person to have come close is very dead."

"So even the magical World War 2 formula is not going to save us?" A world of zombies and canned beans. What a treat.

"This is… good," Charles says. "Don't you see? Everyone exposed so far died. The mutants die, the humans die and then rise and pass it on. But Captain Rogers did neither. Whatever is, was in his body fought the virus. This means the virus can be beaten. This means the particles interact with each other somehow, that the disease interacts with _something_ that isn't the human genome. There was no indication in the tests we did, but this is proof, this is hope. We need the research."

"Steve's fine. Even if it's only good for one-time use," Rogers says and Charles immediately starts nodding. "It's still something. Unfortunately, we don't have that research on the serum. It died with Dr. Erskine, and now it looks like the virus make-up died with Trask."

"I bet he made notes," Charles says. "Every scientist makes notes, it's irresponsible to do otherwise."

"Nazis often do," Rogers says grimly.

I clench my fists. "There's one other place. His office in DC. I found notes there, on everything he did. It was hidden, well hidden. There was a safe with a biometric lock." Which means no one gets in but me, not without specialized equipment. Which means…

"Then… truce?" Romanoff says, having come to the same conclusion. She sets her food aside, stands and holds out her hand. I take it.

"Truce," I say and let the shift dissipate.

"Natasha," Romanoff says.

"Raven."

"What's your plan?"

"We are now a hundred miles from DC. Is there any chance we can get a ride from your organization?" Charles says.

Rogers shakes his head. "It's not impossible, but I'd rather avoid it until we have no other option. We have no direct means of contact, and when we left the Avengers – what's left of them, I mean – were launching a large-scale evacuation from LA."

"There's enough cars around," Natasha says. "Getting close to DC won't be an issue. The problem is we won't know what's waiting inside. Dr. Xavier—"

"Charles."

"Can you sense the creatures?"

Charles hesitates for a minute. "No. I'm sorry." He stares at the window and winces when we all hear a distant howl. He knows what it means, even if the human scream doesn't carry as far. He can't sense them right now, not with Hank's serum in his blood, but if he can sense them… so can they.

There's a part of me that wasn't even surprised that the zombies pick mutants over humans.

"We can work around that." Rogers props his elbows on his knees and stares ahead. "They are not quiet. They howl when they sense people. We don't know the exact range, but we know it's not line of sight. They will not take us unaware."

"You were bitten once." The cuff of my jacket has a thread sticking out of the seam. It takes a bit of effort to work it out, but on the plus side I don't have to watch the erstwhile Captain America glare at me.

"I noticed," he says drily. "We weren't taken unaware."

"We'll be fine," says Charles' boundless optimism. "If we keep quiet."

"We may be forced into that luxury," Natasha says in turn, inspecting her handgun. "I have two spare clips and an almost full box of bullets in my backpack. Then I'm down to knives."

"Same." Steve places his feet on the floor and sighs.

"We only have one and a half box between us," Charles volunteers without a care in the world.

"How are you at hand-to-hand?"

"Not great, I'm afraid," Charles admits, flushing a pale pink. "I've been in fights, but the only way I'd win is if the other guy isn't hitting back."

"Join the club." Steve is staring at the wall opposite, his jaw set. "Natasha—"

"No."

"I will slow you down."

"I don't care if I have to carry you on my back," Natasha says curtly. "You are not staying behind. End of story."

"You know it's a distinct possibility."

"Eliminate that possibility, then. You're about my size, I don't want to have do it."

"No one is staying behind," Charles says. "We will manage. Now, if you don't mind, I need some sleep. Raven, do you mind taking the first watch?"

"I'm good," I say, and drop into a chair in the corner. "You're welcome to rest," I add, gesturing to our unexpected allies. "If you can."

Outside, far in the distance, I hear a howl and a scream. Charles clenches his fists and looks away. Rogers stares at the wall and then drops a hand on Charles' shoulder.

"It will be okay."

"Not for them." Charles drops onto the bed and closes his eyes. His fists are clenched in the bedspread, as they have been every night since the mansion. I don't know if he sleeps.

I know I don't.

* * *

The night passes in relative quiet. There's howling coming from all directions, but the flow seems to pass us by. Romanoff pulls a small radio out of her pack and we listen to a series of short communiques, detailing the migrations of hordes. It's almost like a weather forecast, if weather ate people along the way. Luckily for us, the news is not all bad, or rather it's all terrible, but not hopeless. Safety is a pipe-dream, but it's good to know we'll be coming up against groups and not swarms. I don't like our chances against a swarm. Hell, I wouldn't like my chances against a swarm if I didn't have to look after Charles, who can hit a tin can at a hundred paces with barely a glance, yet has trouble hitting a dead human between the eyes from a distance of twenty feet.

It's not what concerns Rogers and Romanoff, however. They listen in tense silence for the news to change, but it never does. Maybe the radio doesn't have enough of a range, or maybe there's nothing to talk about, because both Avengers curl up in their respective corners wrapped in that peculiar mixture of relief and disappointment, liberally sprinkled with regret. No news is good news, maybe, but not if you're wondering if you're the last of the Avengers.

I know the feeling.

At first dawn Romanoff gathers her supplies and shoulders her backpack long before the rest of us are up. The people whose hospitality we were enjoying left behind a few cans of vegetables stored, so we pack that, along with a couple of bottles of drinking water. The toilet reservoir is just full enough to wash up, then it's time to go.

Rogers hotwires a car abandoned by the road. It takes three tries to find one with a decent supply of fuel, and by that time we have attracted the attention of several zombies, but Romanoff takes them out without looking before the howl can carry past a block.

One of them is a ten year old boy.

Charles gets into the back seat of the car without protest, and stares out the window as we begin the three-hour ride.

"Hey," Rogers says. He's quiet; he probably doesn't mean for me to hear, but if my primary school history class was worth anything, he is partially deaf, so he ends up talking a little louder than he thinks he is. "Hey. He was already dead."

"It's not that."

"It was a dead child. There is no good way to react to that. Believe me, I know."

"You've seen many?"

Rogers grimaces and then coughs. It takes him by surprise, and he spends a good minute hacking up a lung. "Sorry. I almost forgot I used to do that."

"Can't blame you for trying," Romanoff says from behind the wheel. "It sounds like it sucks."

"You ain't seen half of it, I'm afraid. My asthma is legendary, ask—" he catches himself mid-sentence and finishes with "anyone."

"That sounded a lot more like pulmonary edema rather than asthma." Charles smiles faintly when Rogers looks his way, eyebrow raised. "I'm not a doctor, but I have spent some time in a hospital. I would recognize the sound anywhere."

"I don't recall that being in your long list of scholarly pursuits," Romanoff says, swerving to the right to avoid an abandoned Camaro. There are blood spatters on the crack windshield. It's probably for the best that Charles isn't looking.

"I was a patient, not a student," he says, pressing his fingertips to his knee.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I got better, eventually."

"That's debatable."

A brief silence follows, which is when I realize it was me who said it.

"I wasn't trying to cure myself from alcoholism, so yes, I stand by it, thank you for your input."

"Maybe you should have been."

"Maybe," Charles says, turning away, "you can look away and mind your own business."

Rogers looks between us, brows furrowed. "Now's not the greatest time."

"No," Charles agrees. "Apologies. We can work on our issues later."

"And just in time." Romanoff slows down as the road becomes littered with empty and not-empty cars. Thankfully, most of the zombies inside sport head wounds, big and small. They are not a concern. Their sheer number is a comfort, in a way; we still don't know how the virus works, but we know that the creatures move away from corpses of their own kind. Something about potential hunting grounds, Hank said before we left, without much conviction, but without undue doubt, either. "I can smell the difference between a dead zombie and a living one, so maybe they can, too. It's not strong, but it's… obvious."

"We're safer on the road," Charles says, sharing Hank's findings with the group.

"Do you know why? We didn't observe a significant change in their physiology from human to… that. There were extreme levels of adrenaline and cortisol, but not much changed when the zombie was terminated."

Charles hesitates before replying. "We are pretty sure the infection has got something to do with the nervous system. Obviously they recognize their own, because they only attack the living, and sometimes uninfected corpses, so there is at least a fraction of perception in their brains. It's not necessarily smell. Just… some form of perception."

There was a theory that Charles and Hank developed, one I have no intention of sharing, and by the looks of it neither does he: telepathy is prevalent in humankind. Nothing of Charles' level, of course, but all humans have it in their biological makeup to recognize another conscious mind. Perhaps Trask's virus only strips everything else away.

"So they aren't dead." Rogers nudges an open car door out of the way.

"That depends. There's no coming back from an infection, if that's what you mean. There was significant necrosis in the cerebral cortex in the samples we examined, while the cerebellum remained relatively intact. The necrosis spreads to other tissues, too, so before long they will start falling apart. Yes, you can make the case that while their brains work, they are still alive, but it's not quite true."

"And you're positive there's no way to save those infected?"

Charles closes his eyes briefly. "Steve… There's damage that can't be fixed. We can experiment with saving the living tissue, but there is no way to restore what's died."

Rogers offers a small smirk, one that's almost lost amidst the grim determination not to cough. "How do you explain me, then?"

"There's no way to reverse it, once it happens, but maybe there's a chance to neutralize the change before it happens. We have to hope your serum wasn't this one thing capable of doing so."

"You're an optimistic man," Rogers says.

"Hope, contrary to what some people may tell you, has very little to do with optimism. Optimism is innate. Hope is a choice."

"Yeah." Rogers smiles and looks ahead, at the cluttered road before them, before turning to me. "Lead the way, ma'am."

"Right." Luckily, we find a plan of the city in the first car, which spares me the embarrassment of admitting I have no idea where I'm supposed to lead them. Last time I was in Washington I arrived by plane. "Trask's offices are here." It's one of the fancier parts of town, one of the more prestigious. Far away from the political center.

"Four miles."

"Six, if we stay on the road longer," Rogers says immediately, consulting his compass. "As you said, we're safer on the road. Less bottlenecks, more escape routes. We can afford the extra hour."

Even so, it's well past midday when we step off the main road, a good hour later than we thought it would be. Turns out the history classes weren't exaggerating when listing Captain America's health issues prior to becoming Captain America. Who knew, propaganda didn't lie, for once.

"Alright, this looks like it's going to be a nightmare," Romanoff says when we make it to the building Trask's main office is in. "How many workers did he have?"

"I know there used to be a secretary, or an assistant at the desk, maybe some security staff. It was quite late when I got there, so…" But as it turns out, we needn’t have worried. The building is all but deserted, save for a few corpses on the curb. We barely even take notice. Even if they weren't dead, they were in enough pieces not to be a threat. Some desperate souls dove off the roof rather than face the end of the world.

Trask's office is just how I remember it, vast, imposing, and empty, save for the corner which contained his desk. It already feels like ancient history, when it was barely three months ago that I was here for the first time. It's dark in here, even though the day is far from done, and the lighting fixtures overhead stay dark, no matter how many times Charles tries to flip a switch.

"This is the safe," Romanoff says, once the hideous painting is moved aside. "Clever. It could take a few minutes to get through the lock."

"Or, I can just do this." Fingerprints, for all that they're supposed to be unique, are ridiculously easy to counterfeit, especially once it's already been done. The safe must have its own source of power, because as soon as the scanner confirms Bolivar Trask's fingerprint, the door opens to the vast collection of research materials, bathed in blue light.

"There's a skillset I'd have killed for, once upon a time."

"Like you can't do almost as well," Rogers says. The bandage on his right hand is soaked-through, again. "Hemophilia," he adds when he sees me looking. "It'll get better eventually."

"I'll let you know once I learn how to charm biometric locks." Romanoff flips through the files pulling out folders seemingly at random. "How many of those do we need to take?" she asks. "Which ones? Dr. Xavier?"

"Charles?"

There's silence.

Charles stands in the shadowed corner of the room, staring, transfixed, at a shape on the floor. A shape which is still moving, crawling towards him, its skeletal hands reaching for his ankles, while Charles seems to be shrinking where he stands, his legs giving in under his weight.

"Charles!"

"I don't…" he starts saying. "There are so many."

"Jesus Christ." The room all but flashes in front of my eyes and I drag him back to the desk. The body on the floor – and it is now just a body, a fresh bullet hole in its skull – remains a fixture, onto which Charles' gaze is pinned, but he lets himself be pushed into a chair. His hands are trembling. "Goddamn it, Charles!"

There's only one ampule left, and it's far from full. Jesus. Hank said to take it in smaller does, but we have been on the road for a while now, longer than we planned. The needles haven't been sterilized in a while, but I have a lighter in my pocket, and it has to be enough. It has to be enough, because it can't be good, if his eyes are this vacant, who knows what he's seeing, who he's hearing. "Stay with me, Charles!"

"They won't come back anymore," he whispers and then throws his head back and screams.

Or tries to. Because as soon as his mouth opens Rogers' hand slaps across it, the thick bandage muffling the noise.

"Charles," he says. "Please calm down. Look at me. It's alright if they don't come back. It's alright. You need to let them go."

"How?" Charles tries, but I've a grip on his bicep and the needle is plunging into his vein and then—and then it's fine. "Sorry," he says, leaning forward to brace his elbows against his knees. "Christ. I thought… I thought I had more time."

"So did I. Why the fuck didn't you say there was only one left?" I ask, willing my hands not to tremble. "You're going to get all of us killed!"

"It's not like you can't make it back on your own, and I'm a geneticist, not a biochemist, so Hank can manage without me."

"You should have said!" Anger burns deep in my gut, this close to choking the breath out of my lungs. "As if I don't have enough problems, now I have to drag you back?"

"I'm hardly necessary as a delivery boy. All you need from me now is to determine which files to take."

"You make it really hard for me not to slap you."

"What's stopping you?" Charles slurs. His head lolls back.

"That's enough," Rogers says, stepping between us. "Dr. Xavier – we need you to look at the research. We need to know if any of it is in any way useful."

Charles looks up and for a moment I swear to god the world ceases to exist for him. "I'm sorry," he says, and it comes out a little stronger. "I am. I—well. The conditions are not optimal for telepathy."

"I grew up with asthma in Brooklyn," Rogers says. "I have an inkling."

"Naturally." Charles takes another deep breath. "Raven, please help me up," he says and then hangs onto my arm as we round the desk to examine the files, drawings and notebooks Romanoff's spread on it. "Alright."

He takes a brief look into autopsy reports, but discards them quickly. To the left there is a pile of hand-written sheets, detailing what looks like drawings of cells. Charles thumbs through the first few and goes still, scanning the next several in more detail. "Could you check for samples, please? We're looking for test tubes, especially if they've been sealed shut, or microscope slides."

The haul, unfortunately, is meager, or so I think until we – Romanoff and I – place a small box on a free square of the mahogany desk. Charles' eyes glow as he gently presses the lock and withdraws a slide. "Yes," he breathes.

"Good news?"

"A prelude to good news."

"Which is?"

"According to the notes, this is the original strain of treated cells, which Trask used to develop the virus." Charles holds up a Petri dish. "They are still alive, and there are accompanying notes."

"Is the research complete?"

"No." Charles offers a wry grin, the first smile I have seen on his face since Yonkers, as he turns to face Romanoff. "This is not quite my field, but given what he accomplished the amount of notes is insignificant. This notebook contains detailed criteria for the selection, which means we know where he started, and that's not nothing."

"What do we take?"

"These, definitely." Charles grabs his backpack and carefully wraps the box in a spare shirt. "We will need those, too. The cells were originally Raven's, of course, Raven's skin cells, but they were treated somehow, the mutation which allowed them to change properties was suppressed—that's really the key here, isn't it? The changeability or lack thereof. Raven, it's entirely possible you could be immune."

Thanks Charles, I think when both Rogers and Romanoff turn to look at me with identical blank expressions. "I didn't exactly donate blood to this endeavor," I snap. "I was shot."

"Nobody's blaming you," Rogers says softly and looks to Charles, who, miraculously, manages to ignore the tension in the room.

"Good." The office feels stifling. It's almost a relief when a howl echoes throughout the building.

"Fuck!" Rogers strides to the spiraling staircase and looks down.

"We have time," Romanoff says, but her pistol is in her hand and her spine is tense. "Hurry, Dr. Xavier."

"One more thing," Charles says, stuffing the last of the files into my backpack.

There are still dozens of files piled on the desk, dozens; hundreds of pages of notes, photographs, charts… "Are you sure?"

"No," Charles says. "But then it doesn't matter if we can't get them home, now does it?"

"Fair point." The goddamned backpack is heavy as hell, and yet I'm staring at the piles and piles of raw data still left on the desk. What if Charles is wrong? What if he missed something important?

"They are surprisingly good at harmonizing," Rogers notes, a half-smile playing at the corner of his lips when a series of undead howls claws through my brain. "It's interesting."

"I think the idea is to find the howl paralyzing, but somehow I am not surprised." Romanoff leans over the bannister and fires a couple of shots. "Here's the plan. Fighting our way through this crowd is asking for trouble. We need to make it out before more of the things gather around the building."

"There's a canopy over the main entrance, right under that window. I don't think it was more than an eight-ten feet drop." Rogers says, pointing. "That's where we go."

Romanoff grins. A narrow ledge separates us from the window in questions, nearly fifty zombies waiting for us to slip and probably more on the way. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, aside from the fact that Charles' balance is shit this soon after a dose, things are peachy-keen. Rogers isn't the most stable of customers, either, but he is small enough that the ledge is easier for him to navigate. Still, Romanoff needs to pull him up onto the parapet on the other end, and grins as she does.

"There's something to be said for being on this end," she says cryptically, and Rogers scowls.

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

It turns out Rogers' got the layout of the place down pat. The canopy overlooking the entrance is low enough over the ground that even Charles manages to get down with minimal amount of fuss. He loses his footing when the howl begins to echo and the air fills with the sound of a hundred shuffling, scraping footsteps, coming from all directions, locking us into a narrow circle.

All the shapeshifting in the world won't help you in a chase. I can make my legs longer, I can give myself every physical advantage in the world, but it won't change the fact that something slips in my head when it's time to run, when there is nothing that can be done but run. I blank out and so does everything else. There's no fooling these creatures, there's no disappearing into the crowd. It's just faces which don't see anything but the meat on my bones. It's every nightmare I ever had, rolled into something all too real.

I skid to a stop near a car with an open door, a broken windshield and keys in the ignition. There's a bloodstain on the seat, but fuck it, fuck all of it, the key turns, and the engine roars into life. There is half a tank of gas to keep it going until I'm out of here, out of the city, just _out_.

The car doors on the other side are wrenched open and Romanoff slides into the shotgun seat, already rolling the window down, gun at the ready.

"Back up," she says.

In the rearview mirror the horde is a greying, howling mass, closing in, closing around—

"Roll the window up," I say. The car doesn't have the greatest turn radius, not for a street this narrow, but it is enough to circle Charles and Rogers, put the hulk of it between them and the zombies, until they collapse into the backseat in a tangled pile. The glass on Romanoff's side breaks with the impact of a rotting face, but we are already speeding away by the time the things can do anything about it.

"The backpacks!" Charles scrambles off of Rogers, cradling his pack to his chest.

"The samples are fine," Romanoff says. "You wrapped them up well."

"The papers—"

"Relax, Dr. Xavier. All backpacks made it."

Rogers coughs and rolls himself into the space between the back and front seats, landing on his face, with the enormous backpack dwarfing his skinny body. "I'm not—" he gasps, "a great runner."

"You've done just fine." Charles helps him untangle and get back into the seat. "We're still alive, aren't we?"

Rogers tries to say something, but he is wheezing too badly to make an actual syllable. Charles stares at him and then presses a hand to his chest. "Breathe," he prompts. "Breathe. Slow and easy."

"Nothing easy about it," Rogers manages, between annoyed huffs.

"Everything okay?" Romanoff asks, looking at the hapless duo in the back.

"We're good," Charles tells her and continues to measure Rogers' breathing, counting the beats of his heart, focused and still, though his hands are trembling and he is forcing himself not to look back. Rogers calms down eventually, and it's like all of the fight goes out of him at once, because he and Charles both sink into the seats, heads tipped back.

"Where are we headed?" Romanoff opens the glove compartment, finds a map, a spare water bottle and a pair of men's gloves.

"Westchester," I tell her. "Hank—our scientist is there. We hope. We haven't had contact with him in a while."

"We better hope he's still there, then," she says.

"Yeah. We'd better."

In the backseat, Rogers' head drops onto Charles' shoulder. A gurgling, wet snore disturbs the silence every other breath, but other than that the car is silent. These are pretty good conditions to be driving in, all and all: a decently maintained car, an empty road, and silent passengers.

If the world outside wasn't a bleak nightmare, it would almost be pleasant.

We drive through the roads strewn with abandoned cars, empty cars, cars with no glass in them, and cars which tremble and howl as we pass, because their occupants are still there, restrained by the seatbelts. We drive and we don't look. On occasion I would slow down and Romanoff would stretch out a hand out the window and fire a couple of times, silencing the screams.

Charles and Rogers sleep through most of it.

* * *

It's dark when we pass New York.

"There's a radio in my backpack," I say to Romanoff. "We need to contact Hank."

She doesn't answer. Instead she digs into my backpack and finds the portable radio Hank had cobbled together before we went and begins to fiddle with the dials. "A call every fifteen minutes, do you think?"

"Should suffice. Call for Beast, channel sixteen."

Romanoff nods. "Beast, come in, Beast, over," she says into a microphone and repeats the call four times until finally the radio fizzles and spits a reply.

"This is Beast. Ra—Mystique? Over," comes Hank's voice, distorted through distance and worry, anchored with relief. Hank. Hank is fine. The wheel is steady in my hands, Charles is breathing in the backseat and Hank is fine.

"She's here. Everything's well. We have the research. Over."

"Oh thank god. Do you have transport?"

"An old Chevrolet. What's the situation?"

"The road is clear, but the… place is surrounded. I have a plan though. Where are you?"

"Two hours," I say, which Romanoff dutifully repeats.

"Call me back in an hour for details. Out."

"That sounds promising," Rogers rasps from the back seat.

"Promising, really?" Romanoff cocks an eyebrow and looks over her shoulder. "Because all I got was 'I'm under siege'. Are there tunnels?"

"There is an underground exit, but it hasn't been used in a while. I don't know how secure it is," Charles says. "We probably should have checked, but getting out of the mansion hasn't been a priority for a while."

Hank contacts us an hour to the dot from the previous call. "Alright, this is not perfect, but I made a few rope bridges between nearby trees and the roof. You need to drive through the western gates and proceed as close to the fence as possible. I'll meet you in the first birch tree in the cluster. Over."

"Understood. Out."

Romanoff packs away the radio and looks at Rogers. "There'll be climbing."

"I figured."

"There will probably be zombies on the ground."

"I figured that too." Rogers hesitates. "Nat—you should take the files from my pack. Just in case."

"It'll be fine." Charles rests his hand on Rogers' knee. "Hank is strong, and he's agile. He'll get us all inside. We'll make it," he says with something approaching quiet confidence, a tone I haven't heard in a while.

He isn't wrong, it turns out. Even when his knees give out on the ropes and he tumbles into the horde below, only to be stopped mere inches from their grasping hands by Hank's clawed, furry hand closing around his ankle. In retrospect it seems weird that neither Romanoff nor Rogers bat an eye at the enormous, blue creature which greets them from a birch tree, but then they do work with a man who turns into a green monster when agitated.

They hardly even give me a second glance, either.

"I can't—Hank, I can't—" Charles gasps, dangling helplessly. Even from the distance I can see his eyes are losing focus. "They are all _yelling_."

"Charles!" Rogers' hands clench in the ropes and he moves forward one inch at a time. His muscles tremble with the effort of staying balanced. It's a good thing Hank was waiting for us, as promised, and that the backpacks are already safe on the rooftop. "Charles, listen to me. Focus. Focus on me. You can do this."

"…Steve?"

"Yeah. Listen to me, Charles. You can do this. Do you hear?"

Charles lets his head tip back and looks down at the gaping maws of the creatures which would devour him alive, if he were dangling just a little closer to the ground. He closes his eyes and folds his hand around his ears, as though the gesture was enough to keep the voices out of his head. "Hank," he says, on the verge of a sob. "Pull me up. Please. I don't—I don't have much time."

He trembles when he is back on his feet and moves slowly, but he won't allow Hank to carry him to safety. Not yet. Not even when he collapses on the mansion roof, held up by his own trembling arms and Rogers' hand on his shoulder.

"We can't stay here," he whispers. His voice is hollow, yet we all hear it, despite the howling. It's like there's an echo, straight through the head. "I can—it comes back in flashes," he adds to Romanoff and Rogers. "The serum, it suppresses my telepathy, allows me to walk. There will be more. There will… I felt them. Hundreds, thousands. They are all on the move. Here. They. I think they—Hank, they can sense us. Me. Mostly me. But we're not safe here. You are not safe here."

"They sense you?" Rogers straightens up and for a second forgets to wheeze. "How?'

"I'm—telepathy. I think… there's something in the human brain that recognizes fellow humans, no matter what, and I think that's the part that survives in them the longest. Everybody has it, telepaths just have… more or it." A strangled scream follows. None of us moves.

"How long since your last dose?" Hanks asks anxiously, peering into Charles' eyes. "You know what, never mind, I'm going to get some." He bypasses the staircase entirely in favor of leaping off the roof and into the room immediately below through the window.

"Is it possible they followed us?" I ask, but it's a moot point. For one, there's no way, we were travelling too fast, and for another, does it matter? They are here and they are howling, and Charles' hands tighten around his ears, as though he could hold off the onslaught of dead brains with his hands, so two for the price of one, he hears them in stereo, in his head and through his ears.

Luckily Hank returns in a matter of minutes, with a box and a syringe. I don't even have to look at his face to know he scraped the bottom of the barrel for whatever's left.

"How defensible is this place?" Romanoff asks, hands loose at her sides.

Hank looks up at her and blinks, as though he is only now registering the stranger properly. "Not very. I boarded the ground-floor windows, barricaded what I could, but it is not a castle. There're too many windows on ground level. If there were more of us, we could hold it, maybe scrape together some bricks and wall the windows in, collapse the staircases, but as it stands, the only truly secure place is the roof or the basement, where Cerebro is."

"Cerebro?"

Hank blinks at both Rogers and Romanoff and sniffs. "I'm sorry, Miss—"

"Romanoff. Natasha Romanoff. This is Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America."

"Oh." Hank's gaze skips to the bloodied bandage on Roger's hand and back to his face. "Oh. I see – the serum counteracts the bite? This is great, this is wonderful!" He looks to me, and then to Charles before straightening. "Cerebro is a machine we build to enhance Charles' telepathy, but it is entirely underground. There is only one way in or out. It'd be safe and we can move all the supplies there, but…"

"We'd be trapped."

"Yes. I can rig cameras and screens, so that we know, but essentially yes, to be safe we would have to block the only entrance."

"What about communication?"

"We're down to short-range radio, I'm afraid. Most lines have been damaged, many frequencies are jammed by the military, by people. I could try and piece something together, but I've mostly been busy trying to keep them from getting into the house. It's a big house," Hank adds defensively, flexing his claws around the syringe.

"You've done well," Charles rasps and then keens. "There's too many!"

Romanoff saunters to the edge of the roof and looks down. "Steve, thoughts?"

"We can't stay here," Rogers says, "but we can fight our way out. How many can you take down?" he asks Hank, who looks down bashfully.

"I'm not the best fighter," Hank admits. "I'm strong, but…"

"We have about a hundred bullets between the four of us, if my math is correct. We can take care of the lot here," Romanoff says, "but we'd be defenseless later. I can fight hand-to-hand, but not indefinitely. If what Dr. Xavier's saying is true, we will have trouble driving out of here."

True. The car can plow through a person, but a crowd? Not likely.

"It still won't matter if we have nowhere to go."

"We will go to the Avenger's base." Rogers' hand closes around his compass and he nods west. "It's not far from here. It's got better defenses and it's manned by paramilitary personnel. If there's anyone there and they aren't off fighting the infected."

"If they are still alive. If even Captain America got bitten…" Hank lets the words hang in the air for a moment, then shakes his head and helps Charles out of his jacket, rolls up his sleeve.

"Even if there's no one there, the compound is still highly defensible."

"Will that matter if we can't fight our way in? What about supplies?"

"Wait…" Charles grabs Hank's wrist and looks up, staying the syringe. He looks at Hank, then me, past Romanoff and then at Rogers. "I can search for them. I can—with Cerebro I can find anyone on the planet."

"Will you be able to handle it?" Hank asks slowly, the syringe still at the ready, a promise of silence, of whatever peace there is to be had hanging in the air.

"What's the alternative?" The words are hollow. "I know it's the last you've got."

Down below there's a crack and a howl, which echoes inside the mansion. Charles clenches his eyes shut and forces a pained moan down.

"But if I do this, I might… draw more of _them_."

"Stark has enough firepower to get through the zombies and the floors, if need be. There are resources at the base, scientists and laboratories, and concrete walls with no windows," Romanoff looks at Rogers, though her eyes flicker to me briefly.

"We can't defend the mansion," I say. "The roof would be our only secure spot, and even that wouldn't last, but if we go down and we can't signal anybody, we're as good as dead. The world is as good as dead, if we have the research and no one knows." The zombies seem to multiply on the lawn, one appearing after the other. They do sense us, I think in dread. There's no thought in their rotting brains and they still seek us.

Hank nods, reluctantly. "Raven's right. Charles, if you can handle it, Cerebro is our best option, but if you can't…"

"Cerebro," Captain America says, staring down at Charles. "You can handle it."

Charles nods, grasps his elbow, and Hank's, and forces himself to his feet. "I need—the wheelchair." His eyes close briefly and he grimaces. "Agent Romanoff, please head to the kitchen with Raven, get what supplies you can and bring them into Cerebro. Hank, get the backpacks, all of Trask's research is in there. Get what you can of your own and meet us downstairs. We need to lock down before we start, we need to—" he clenches his teeth. "Steve, you need to help me to my study. My wheelchair is in there."

"Of course."

Romanoff hands Rogers a handgun and nods. "Ten minutes," she says. "Then I'm coming for you both."

"Likewise," Rogers counters with a wet cough into his bandaged hand.

Hank stands with all four backpacks slung over his broad shoulders and moves toward the door. "I don't think they made it very far inside, even if they broke a window," he says, "but it won't take long. Good luck!" with one swift move he wrenches the door open and disappears into the darkness within. It's our turn next, me and Romanoff, and we run through the desolate house as silently as we can, heading for the kitchen.

It's empty, but for the echoes.

"Cans," Romanoff says immediately, moving to the cupboards. "Where do you keep bags?"

"There's a breakfast trolley and boxes."

"Even better."

Romanoff leaves flour and beans in their bags, which makes sense – if Charles can't contact the Avengers, we might need those when we go on the run, and it's not like zombies engage in baking. Cans though, cans can be piled on the trolley without restraint.

"We won't need water, there's a bathroom down there," I say when she begins to fill empty wine bottles with water.

"A bathroom?" Romanoff quirks her mouth in a smile. "Really?"

"It was intended as a training facility. There are showers and toilets."

"Will they work?"

"They should, the sink does." I don't recall the details, but… "I think we've an independent water source here, definitely a working septic tank."

"Very well then." She drops the bottle and we go back to filling boxes with cans, pausing occasionally to shoot an incautious zombie showing its face in the large, broken window by the kitchen door. "This should last us a week," Romanoff says at long last. "At least."

"Can they get here in a week?"

"A better question would be can we get out of here in a week?"

Not a fun question.

We make it to the basement in record time, grabbing a few blankets along the way, and something in my brain unravels when the elevator doors close and we step out into the pristine floors of the basement levels, where Cerebro is. It's so shiny and bright, quite unlike everything I have seen for the past month.

It's something of a surprise that Charles and Rogers made it downstairs first.

"Is there a lock, or…?" Romanoff inspects the elevator as the doors close and a faint whirr telling us the machinery is moving away from where we stand.

"It's coded. There's no way they get in without the code."

"Good news."

Rogers has Charles in front of the Cerebro panel, and is crouched beside him, his hands on Charles' knees when Hank bursts out of the elevator in a flurry of papers and test tubes. There's even a microscope tucked under his elbow.

"Everything okay?"

"Yes ma'am," Hank says. He stumbles through a door and deposits all the research on a shelf there, over the backpacks piled below. "I'll repack that in a minute, in case we need to go in a hurry." He looks at Charles and Rogers, then back to me and Romanoff. "Do we have everything we need?"

"Food for a week, more if we're frugal, and apparently there's water?" At Hank's nod, Romanoff continues, "Rudimentary supplies, yes, everything is in place."

"Alright then." Hank takes a deep breath and steps to the panel by the elevator. "Full lock-down."

I try to tell myself I'm not unnerved when the lights dim and the comforting whir of machinery dies down to a low hum. I try, but… well. It's unnerving. We follow Charles down the walkway, follow the faint squeak of wheels as he moves towards the console.

"Charles?" Rogers asks. "Are you ready?"

"I think so." He reaches for the helmet and put it on his head. The lights on the console flicker and all the gauges come into life all at once. "Oh god," he manages, and then falls silent as. It's hard to tell, but I swear a shudder goes through me when Charles exhales and departs his body, melts into the labyrinth of minds. The sphere is awash in crimson light, spilling from Charles' brain directly into ours, all the minds he can sense, all the bright dots, crimson and blue, flashing into grey, seeming to scream all at once. Charles' lips move now and then again, as he skips from mind to mind, occasionally uttering words in English, Spanish, Chinese. It has not spread that far yet, it couldn't have, but there he is, latched onto a soul that's begging for mercy, onto the terror that is the pervading emotion.

Charles wrenches the helmet off of his head and gasps for breath.

"Did it work?" Rogers asks, looking down at Charles, then Hank. "Did you find them?"

"No, I—" Charles takes a deep breath and continues, "There's too many, too loud. I can… I will find them eventually. But I need time."

"How much time?" Romanoff asks, and it's obvious we are all thinking the same thing: how long, exactly, can he keep it up.

"There are millions of people still alive, and I need to sift through them if I want to find a particular person. Terror usually makes it easier, but everyone is terrifies and then the others…" Charles shudders and I think of the brief, overwhelming flash of grey. "I don't know who I'm looking for."

"You said everyone has some form of telepathy," Rogers says suddenly.

"Telepathy is a strong word."

"But people do recognize each other, right?"

"On some level, yes." Charles blinks the tears away from his eyes.

"If you went into my head, found how I recognize them, would that help?"

Charles stares at him, through him, and then—it's like an electric jolt. "Yes, I believe so. But Steve, to find someone you know I'd have to—"

"Do it," Rogers says.

"Will it kill him?" Romanoff asks, but she isn't stepping forward, isn't really doing anything. Only her eyes remain mobile, tracing Charles' face.

"No, certainly not. But Steve isn't a telepath, and I will need to…" Charles moves his hands, forms words which hardly even make sense. "This is more than memories, he will have to help me look. And it will be taxing. And invasive."

"Do it," Rogers repeats.

Charles nods. "Can you… It will be easier if I can touch you."

Rogers comes forward, settles on his knees in front of the wheelchair, and takes Charles' hand. Cerebro comes alive once more and I feel Charles latch onto Rogers, channel the sprawl of human consciousness with the aid of another mind. Rogers trembles but remains as he were, even when blood begins to seep from his nose.

It's hard to track what is going on, even though the crimson and blue lights continue to flash and the grey eats away at the bright spots, like a disease, but eventually, they come back. Hank gently pulls the helmet off of Charles' head and lays it on the console.

"Charles? Can you hear me?" Hank asks, flashing a light into their eyes in turn.

Though it's faint, his fingers spasm around Rogers'.

"Will he be okay?" Romanoff asks. "They?" Because Rogers is unconscious now, his head pillowed on Charles' knees.

"Yes," Hank says immediately. Then, a little less certain, "Yes? This isn't an exact science, we try, but only Charles really knows what it's like. And… how can it be good?"

Romanoff gently plies Rogers away from Charles and settles him on the floor. "We brought some blankets. Help Dr. Xavier out of here, get him to lie down," she says.

"No, it's best that he stays in here. Cerebro is… quiet. Until it's activated, it's quiet in here. It's better if he stay inside. If they both stay inside, actually. Connections like that will have effect for a while."

It's weird to leave, after that, so we spread the blankets on the platform and sleep there. It feels crowded, and far too close to comfort, but somehow not one of us moves away. Not even an inch.

Not even when Charles and Rogers both come to the next morning with a strangled scream. Unlike Charles Rogers stays awake, however, slowly sitting up and dissolving into a fit of coughs.

"He'll be fine," Rogers says when Romanoff makes a move to keep him up. "We'll be fine."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I just…" He smiles, just a little bit, and brushes a strand of hair away from Charles' forehead. Charles turns into the touch and his eyelids tremble, but do not lift. "I have hope, that's all."

He's right, it turns out. Charles wakes properly maybe a few hours after what had to have been the morning call; he wakes calm and collected, and present.

"Welcome back," Rogers says warmly.

Then there's nothing to do but wait. Romanoff turns out to have a pack of cards in her jacket, which is out only source of entertainment, for hours, days; it's surprising how unreliable cans are as means of telling the time. We stay silent, hardly even looking at one another, except for when the game warrants it, until the lights flicker back to life full-time and the elevator hums as it begins to descend.

"Zombies or Stark?" Romanoff asks, pocketing her cards.

"Can I vote neither?" Rogers quips and both he and Romanoff smirk, even as they both lift their guns and take aim.

It is neither. Because when the elevator finally opens it is none other than Captain America standing in the middle of it, shield and all.

"Steve," he says and strides forward. "Thank fuck."

"You got the message," Rogers says calmly, though his eyes tell a wholly different story. "Bucky."

"Yeah." Bucky smiles, ducks his head. "Sam's covering the helicopter with Iron Man right now." Captain America – Bucky? – affixes the shield to his back and draws Rogers into a one-armed hug. "Steve," he says and Rogers clings to him, desperately.

"What's the status?" Romanoff asks, a gun still held loosely by her side, and they let go.

Captain America looks at her and says, rather stiffly, "The base is secure. The labs are fired up and ready to go. You got the research?"

Hank wordlessly points to the neatly packed backpacks, hard angular edges stretching the canvas. "All we have, all we know."

The Captain nods. "Hope you're good to go, because we had to burn the perimeter to the ground for a landing spot."

And… we go. We leave the mansion behind, crawling with the creatures whose empty eyes follow our departure, mindless of Iron Man's cannons and the razing fire all around. Hank clings to the railing with his claws and stares out at the ruins. "This was home, you know," he tells me quietly.

I know. But I also know that Rogers is still holding Charles' hand, that Charles is counting his breathing and I think… I think, somehow, we are going to be fine.

THE END


End file.
